Monday, July 06, 2009

Fail.

By now you know Sarah Palin is getting all mavericky on us again, this time by quitting the job the people of Alaska elected her to do. Why? Jesus, who really knows? My guess is she's just tired of the whole governor thing and she sees the opportunity to make a lot more money speaking to adoring hordes in the lower 48.

And, really, how you gonna keep 'em down in Wasilla after they've seen Neiman Marcus?

This isn't the first time Sarah's quit. In fact it's more of a pattern in her career, beginning with 5 years and 5 colleges to get her bachelor's. Then, as part of Wasilla's town council, she quit to run for mayor. Then, as mayor, she quit to run for governor. I'm surprised she's still with Todd.

One of the Sunday morning bobblehead shows said that people who follow Governor Palin were moved to look up the clinical definition of a narcissistic personality. According to people who decide these things, the disorder is "...characterized by an inflated sense of self-importance, need for admiration, extreme self-involvement, and lack of empathy for others. Individuals with this disorder are usually arrogantly self-assured and confident. They expect to be noticed as superior..."

Now, I know politicians in general are pretty damn self-involved, otherwise they wouldn't be telling you how great they are every few minutes. What's the old joke? The most dangerous place to be is in between a camera and (fill in politico's name). But damn, that definition might as well have a picture of Palin next to it.

What really what tickled me this morning was Failblog.org. This morning, for a brief time, Failblog was surrounded by ads like the one up there for Sarah's PAC. That was beautiful.

14 comments:

Living in NY, we remember when Hillary was running for her 2nd Senate term saying that if you vote for her "she is committed to completing 6 years again serving the people of NY and nothing else." Well, realists new she was in NY only for a platform to run for President. But the liberals and Dems voted for her again anyway and she did nothing for us in NY. No one said anything about that.

Do not compare Hillary Clinton to this piece of work and don't speak as though you speak for all New Yorkers. While we may have known she was using the position as a platform for her further political aspirations, we were nothing but pleased by her performance and dedication to her work as our Senator.

Clinton was smart, savvy and tough- and she never quit. All qualities that the Tundra Twat lacks.

I figured it out ... a Democrat braveheart ... sort of like the Democratic senate. You're a Hillary supporter. That figures. You joke about people losing jobs. I don't know why Dave lets punks like you play here, except you support the Democratic Party so blindlingly.

I'll bet it'll be a regular laugh riot for you when your party shoots down national health care again.

Charlie is 100% right about Hillary's involvement in job losses in NY. The State is struggling, young people have fled to other States, and NY manufacturing is dead. And then she went on the national stage and praised her job performance fighting for NYers.

Having spent my first 22 years in NY, I can safely say that Hillary had approximately zero to do with the state's terrible economy.

You've got to go back to the dark days of the 80s where NYC was sucking money from the rest of the state. By the time Giuliani turned the city around, most of the businesses upstate had already suffered terribly. My home town of Endicott was the birth place of IBM. By the early 90s, the three large plants that drove the area's economy we're all but shuttered. The fact is that the state taxes were so high in order to take care of NYC that companies relocated their jobs out of state. (For IBM, a fair number of jobs moved to Dave's neighborhood in the NC Research Triangle.) Of course, once the city started to boom, the money never started to flow upstate.

While I'm not a huge fan of Hillary, she was very successful in helping the Lockheed Martin plant in Owego, NY land the contract for the new Marine 1 helicopters. This brought in a lot of high-paying job and really helped the economy start to turn around. Of course, that project has been put on hold. The area's economy is heading south again with no foreseeable turnaround.

Obama is taking a lot of heat about his decision to scrap the project, however, it is hard for me to see it so one-sided. He's got the tough job of trying to get the economy turned around and there are tough choices to be made about where to save money. Something has got to give...

I'm sorry that it's my old hometown that is taking the hit, but I respect the need to change how money is being spent.

My ex-wife owns an employment agency (temps and perm) and was on the executive board of Business woman of America (still is probably). She was there in Albany a few years before the current economic crisis when Hillary not only supported state legislation that facilitated outsourcing, she gave it her personal blessing by lobbying for it elsewhere. The half million jobs lost in Buffalo she was quick to blame on Bush. She can't do that with jobs being outsourced from NY (especially Wall Street ... including those lost after taxpayers bailed out Wall Street--the double wammy).

I've lived in NY 51 years before moving to Jersey ... Hillary did a lot more for her political future (and outsourcing) than she did for New Yorkers.

Hillary certainly has her faults... just like every other politician alive or dead. Or every other person for that matter. I'm not an apologist.

However, I think the economic situation that NY is in, and the rest of the country for that matter, stems less from an outsourcing of jobs than perhaps a federal government intent on keeping the national budget deep in deficits. The fact that Wall Street is constantly looking at Quarterly Statements as a way of judging the value of a business ensures that businesses act more with short-term goals than long-term stability and infrastructure. (Um, car industry? Yeah, I'm talking about you.)

My point about NY and NYC is that there wasn't an effort to use the 90s success in NYC to help rebuild the business environment for the rest of the state. So instead of communities being able to support locally owned grocery stores, clothing shops, hardware stores, sporting good stores, etc, now they get WalMart. All of the money that used to stay within the community is now sent to Bentonville & China.

The economy is in shambles from deregulation; whether or not capitalism/greed is the chicken or the egg is another debate for another day, but every president and their party going back (at least) to Regan are directly responsible for the current mess. Outsourced jobs may be a small percentage of the overall jobless rate, but they represent jobs that aren't coming back and for many of those who lost work to outsourcing (like us in our 50's) the stimulus proposals for roadwork construction doesn't seem very viable.

Hillary doesn't get to dodge her support for outsourcing. In New York it has destroyed several industries. Now that it's making its way to the professional ranks (lawyers, etc.), maybe it will be reviewed (with a longer-term effect in mind).

Where I work first year legal associates just took a $10,000 hit on their salaries. They're the lucky ones. Wait'll they try to pay off $200,000 in loans on a $430 a week unemployment check.

Hillary wasn't looking long term either when she supported outsourcing in New York. She was looking at Washington the entire time she visited New York.

Most people who have lost jobs to outsourcing don't really care about what percentage of unemployment statistics they fall into ... they're more concerned about whether or not they get to keep their insurance coverage, cars and or homes.

Knowing they just refunded the same bastards that put them out of work (for the sake of greed--because it's so much better for business to pay an Indian in Chennai $3.00 an hour rather than an American $25.00) {because those businesses did such a great job using that philosophy to essentially bankrupt the world} hopefully reminds them that "change" so far has been a one way street ... and Hillary could care less.

I just hope she reads the next war intelligence reports (rather than poll numbers) before she votes to authorize another president to go to war.

As far as NYS vs. NY ... it's why capitalism doesn't work. It's based on greed and sharing is left for the suckers to take care of. The powers that be care as much about upstate NY as Hillary did.